I was going to stick these in the MM, but that upon further review, it seems worthy of its own piece. Ralph Friedgen was, should we say, upset after Maryland fell to Clemson earlier today. Like, angry sound-bite upset.
"I think sometimes our guys think we're on an amusement trip or something," Friedgen said. "We're on a business trip to win football games."
Yikes. This rings eerily similar to the whole "he lost control of the players" theme from last year. Not a good sign.
(Funnily enough, this stands in stark contrast to Dabo Swinney's halftime interview with Mike Hogewood, which was essentially "Have fun, because games are fun and football is a game so football = game = fun. So I'm just going to tell them to come back out and play a fun game and have fun.")
He went into further detail about his complaints elsewhere.
"To go out and not play our best is frustrating. Very frustrating," Friedgen said. "It's us that are causing the mistakes - things we can control. Until we can not do that, we're going to always be mediocre-at best."
That's an obvious understatement, but the tone seems pretty rough. Friedgen's not a happy guy. He also was more than a little peeved about the play of Torrey Smith, who was battling injury the past two weeks and practiced little.
"This new wave, everybody just gets them well for the game, plugs him in and he's going to play - bull," Friedgen said. "It ain't gonna happen. I had a policy in the past that if you don't practice by Thursday you don't play. Right now, they don't practice Thursday, they aren't playing. You've got to get at least something [in practice]. [Torrey Smith] lined up wrong one time. I didn't think he was sharp catching the ball. Torrey is a great player. But you still got to practice. I guess I am old school."
Out of everything I've seen so far, this is the only quote I have a problem with. He changed his practice, but that "I guess I am old school" quote at the end seems to be transferring blame, maybe to Torrey himself.
It's painfully obvious that Smith is playing hobbled, and it's made more clear when he comes up limp every other play he's in. But calling him out in the media - keep in mind, this is Maryland's best player - just seems like a bad idea to me.
I'm sure more angry quotes will come out in the coming hours; those will be in the MM.